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1.1 Interface issues Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I'm getting a bit frustrated with the OF interface. Please note that these comments relate to use on a 15" MacBook Pro; I'm sure the experience is much different on a large screen.

1) I hate inspectors. On a small screen there's never anywhere convenient to put them, and depending on what you're doing, they're always in the way and have to be moved.

Much better IMHO would be an info pane, either as a side bar or a bottom bar. For the best of both worlds, how about making the inspector dock-able so I can fix it wherever I like.

2) Fixed - I've just worked out how to get perspectives onto the toolbar. It'd be nice if I could just drag them there from the perspectives pallet, which is what I was trying to do. Why are they drag-able if I can't put them anywhere?

3) I can set icons for perspectives, but not for contexts? This is kind of worse still because most of the default icons available for perspectives would relate better to contexts, such as a laptop, a car, a home, a shopping bag etc.

4) I'd like the side bar to be customisable. Most "urgent" would be the ability to sort it, for example to get my projects in alphabetical order in planning mode, but it'd also be good if I could drag things like perspectives to it. i.e. more like a proper source bar.

5) Related to 2, if I click on a perspective in the toolbar, the button indents so I can see where I am, and the perspective name appears in the title bar - good so far. But if I then change the view, or even EVERYTHING, it still claims I'm in that perspective, which I'm not of course. I can even click the same (still indented) button and go back to the perspective, so it obviously knows I'm not already there. I'd almost class this as a bug rather than a feature request.

Mark
 
Hi Mark,

There's one remark from my point of view about Inspector (1):

The Inspector is one thing, I like about the mac and OmniFocus. On a small screen, I can use all of the screen without detailed information about a task. If I need them, I only hit shift-cmd-i, put in my data (or read it), and hit shift-cmd-i again so that I'm back to full screen ... with that, I'm focused on the details when I need to and focused on the overview the rest of the time.

Especially on a small screen (MacBook Air), it's by far better than leaving a part of the screen to information, I only need from time to time ... at least for me. Actually, I'm working exactly the same way on my 24" iMac with an additional 30" cinema display and there is room enough.

But it could be a nice option to make the Inspector dockable or optionally display it somewhere inside the main screen. I think it depends on personal working preferences, what's better.

Regards
Boris
 
Hi Boris,

Yes you're right of course, it is down to personal preferences. I don't like the additional step of hiding/showing the inspector (whether by keyboard or clicking). I just expect the info to appear when I need it, indicated by me clicking on an item. With the main window full screen, and shift>cmd>i, it always but always appears exactly where I don't want it to be - over the top of something I want to see. I can make the main window NOT full screen so the inspector appears to one side, but that's wasted space when I don't need to see anything in the inspector.

So ideally I wouldn't have the info bar appear all the time - it'd only appear when something was highlighted. In fact, that's one of the things I dislike about inspectors - the fact that even if nothing is selected, the damn thing hangs around making a nuisance of itself!!

I realise I'm probably arguing against standard OS-X interface design, but the fact is that plenty of other apps use (IMHO) better ways to show contextual info. Dare I say take a look at Things?

Mark

Last edited by MacBerry; 2008-08-03 at 01:59 AM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBerry View Post
I'm getting a bit frustrated with the OF interface. Please note that these comments relate to use on a 15" MacBook Pro; I'm sure the experience is much different on a large screen.
I find that the Inspector sits nicely at the rlght side of the OmniFocus window on my 15" MBP. (I also find it odd to think of a 15" widescreen display as small, but then my first Mac had a 9" screen with a 512x384 pixel resolution....) My comments below represent my point of view but I can see how reasonable people might differ on them.

Quote:
I've just worked out how to get perspectives onto the toolbar. It'd be nice if I could just drag them there from the perspectives pallet, which is what I was trying to do. Why are they drag-able if I can't put them anywhere?
I think they're draggable so you can change the order in the Perspectives window.

Quote:
3) I can set icons for perspectives, but not for contexts? This is kind of worse still because most of the default icons available for perspectives would relate better to contexts, such as a laptop, a car, a home, a shopping bag etc.
But for Contexts, you have the actual name of the context there. If you want to maximize the number of perspectives you can put in the toolbar, you can have the toolbar show icons only. Then it's very helpful to have distinctive icons for each perspective. I see customizable Perspectives icons as useful, for that reason, whereas custom context icons would be an excuse to fiddle instead of making your system more productive.

Quote:
4) I'd like the side bar to be customisable. Most "urgent" would be the ability to sort it, for example to get my projects in alphabetical order in planning mode, but it'd also be good if I could drag things like perspectives to it. i.e. more like a proper source bar.
You can sort the project sidebar in 1.1. Select the items you would like to sort and use the Edit > Sort menu command. You can sort the sidebar by name, status, date added, or date completed.

I don't like the idea of putting things like perspectives in the sidebar, mostly because I think it's bad UI to put something in the sidebar that might alter the sidebar itself instead of the data showing in the main pane of the window. For instance, if I had a Flagged Actions context in the sidebar and I clicked on it in Planning mode, it would switch to Context mode. I can't think of any application I use where making a selection in the sidebar gets rid of the sidebar.

Quote:
5) Related to 2, if I click on a perspective in the toolbar, the button indents so I can see where I am, and the perspective name appears in the title bar - good so far. But if I then change the view, or even EVERYTHING, it still claims I'm in that perspective, which I'm not of course. I can even click the same (still indented) button and go back to the perspective, so it obviously knows I'm not already there. I'd almost class this as a bug rather than a feature request.
But you can click on the X at the far right of the View Bar to restore the perspective settings. The exception is if you have changed modes, unless your perspective is set up to remember settings in both context and planning mode.

As I said, reasonable people can differ on these points!
 
Quote:
1) I hate inspectors. On a small screen there's never anywhere convenient to put them, and depending on what you're doing, they're always in the way and have to be moved.

Much better IMHO would be an info pane, either as a side bar or a bottom bar. For the best of both worlds, how about making the inspector dock-able so I can fix it wherever I like.
In the OF beta's they made the inspector be somewhat context sensitive based on what your selection was in the sidebar or content area. However I still think a good model would be iWork's context sensitive toolbar - even though vertical space is more precious than horizontal (to be clear, I wouldn't want to see the inspector go away, this would be in addition to, not instead of - in a world of infinite engineering resources...)



Quote:
3) I can set icons for perspectives, but not for contexts? This is kind of worse still because most of the default icons available for perspectives would relate better to contexts, such as a laptop, a car, a home, a shopping bag etc.
At a minimum I'd like to see color labels for contexts and projects. Sure they could be abused, but I often find myself scanning through a list to find the one I want - and I don't necessarily want to alphabetize (and keep it sorted).

Quote:
5) Related to 2, if I click on a perspective in the toolbar, the button indents so I can see where I am, and the perspective name appears in the title bar - good so far. But if I then change the view, or even EVERYTHING, it still claims I'm in that perspective, which I'm not of course. I can even click the same (still indented) button and go back to the perspective, so it obviously knows I'm not already there. I'd almost class this as a bug rather than a feature request.
I agree this is confusing. Perspectives should have a visual bar somewhere like the old browsers did telling you you are at a secure site. As soon as you effectively change that perspective, it should revert.

You should also be able to have a toolbar button to be able to "revert" back to default.

-P
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
I find that the Inspector sits nicely at the rlght side of the OmniFocus window on my 15" MBP.
Yes that's how I have mine set up now, and it is the best compromise available, but it still feels like a huge waste of space - there's a huge inspector wide area below the inspector that's not used, and it's even worse when nothing is selected because the inspector uses width while displaying nothing of any use at all.

I think my main issue is that the inspector uses a lot of space yet still doesn't show me everything. If I want to see/change a note for example, I still have to click on the note icon and then edit inline - it's inconsistent, as I have to use the inspector to change some things, yet inline for others. I'd like to see everything appear either inline (ideally) or in an automatically expanding bottom bar.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
But for Contexts, you have the actual name of the context there. If you want to maximize the number of perspectives you can put in the toolbar, you can have the toolbar show icons only. Then it's very helpful to have distinctive icons for each perspective. I see customizable Perspectives icons as useful, for that reason, whereas custom context icons would be an excuse to fiddle instead of making your system more productive.
I don't see why it's an excuse to fiddle - you could say that about any UI element you can configure. I'm guessing most people only set up their contexts once or infrequently.

Icons help a great deal, as they make an item in a list instantly recognisable rather than having to read something. That is pretty much the definition of what an icon is for after-all!

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
You can sort the project sidebar in 1.1. Select the items you would like to sort and use the Edit > Sort menu command. You can sort the sidebar by name, status, date added, or date completed.
Thanks for that, that works. But there're two big buts:

1) It doesn't remember what you've told it, even if you save as a perspective, so anything new added still goes at the top. It's a huge waste of time having to re-sort every time you add a new project.

2) IMHO this is very bad UI design. Why have "sort" in two menu's? I want to view the sidebar differently, so I look in the view menu. I don't want to edit it, so why would I look in the edit menu, especially when there is a sort command in the view menu?

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
I don't like the idea of putting things like perspectives in the sidebar, mostly because I think it's bad UI to put something in the sidebar that might alter the sidebar itself instead of the data showing in the main pane of the window. For instance, if I had a Flagged Actions context in the sidebar and I clicked on it in Planning mode, it would switch to Context mode. I can't think of any application I use where making a selection in the sidebar gets rid of the sidebar.
Yes, I see your point.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
But you can click on the X at the far right of the View Bar to restore the perspective settings. The exception is if you have changed modes, unless your perspective is set up to remember settings in both context and planning mode.
Well, I'm just as likely to change mode as anything else, but even if not one of the things I like about perspectives is that I can hide the view bar once they're set up, so I don't see the cross then. But anyway, I just think it's bad to have a visual indication that I'm looking at one thing, when plainly I'm not any longer.

The only argument I can see for this behaviour is that I then know which perspective I'll be snap-shotting if I choose to do that, but I think there must be cuter ways to deal with that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
As I said, reasonable people can differ on these points!
Oh indeed!

Mark

Last edited by MacBerry; 2008-08-05 at 10:05 PM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBerry View Post
Thanks for that, that works. But there're two big buts:

1) It doesn't remember what you've told it, even if you save as a perspective, so anything new added still goes at the top. It's a huge waste of time having to re-sort every time you add a new project.
Okay, if one wanted the sort operation applied to the entire sidebar all the time, that would be a good argument. But one of the nice things about the current implementation is that you don't have to sort the entire sidebar the same way! And, if you do like your entire sidebar sorted the same way, it's really pretty trivial to re-sort it (click in sidebar, cmd-A to select the entire thing, select entry from Edit->Sort menu). I spend much more effort thinking about the first action in a new project than I do keeping the sidebar tidy.

I find my need for the inspector varies depending on perspective, which shouldn't be too surprising as some of my perspectives have the extra columns and some don't. Some of the perspectives are used for tinkering with the actions (inbox processing, reviews), and some are mostly for keeping track of progress. I'm usually working on a Macbook, and often have persistent growl notifications along the right hand side of the screen (*) so space is definitely at a premium and I'll often turn off the inspector until I need it. It might be a small improvement if perspective snapshots captured whether the inspector was present, but I haven't really thought that through yet.

(*) If you turn on the persistent notifications in growl, as things become available/due/overdue you'll get a little sticky on your screen, and clicking on the OmniFocus folder icon in the notification will take you to a new OF window and the action in question. I find this very handy, as much of the stuff that pops up on my screen first thing in the morning is stuff that can be knocked off without referring to the notes for an action, and once I've cleared off the screen, I'm awake enough so I can get to work on more challenging matters.
 
 


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